Excerpts from Miscellaneous Letters

...The Declaration of Independence lists "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness" as among the inalienable rights of man.
Cutting off part of people's genitals when they're babies censors
their lives, violates their liberty, and cripples their pursuit
of happiness.

...The most fundamental of all rights -- the one right without
which no other rights are possible -- is the right of every human
being to his or her own body. The "Fourth Article" of the Bill of
Rights recognizes this right when it states, "The right of the
people to be secure in their persons ... shall not be violated."
Cutting off part of someone else's genitals by force -- infant
circumcision is by force -- clearly violates that
right.

...Regardless of the reasons offered to justify circumcising a
baby (medical, cultural, religious, social, sexual, hygienic,
prophylactic, aesthetic -- whatever), the fact remains that
infant circumcision is foreskin amputation by force -- the
deliberate, irreversible destruction of a healthy, sensitive,
normal part of someone else's body that is rightfully his and
that he instinctively wants to keep intact.

...Cutting healthy, sensitive, normally functioning tissue --
living flesh -- an organ of perception -- from someone else's
body by force -- infant circumcision is by force -- fulfills
every requirement for the definition of vivisection and violates
the "Do no harm" ethic embraced by every medical society in the
civilized world.

...As you read the books and articles about circumcision; the
"medical reports" and "scientific" "studies" by "experts" and
"authorities" "proving" the many "benefits" of this "procedure";
the interviews, testimonials, and case histories; the arguments,
justifications, and rationalizations -- one fact becomes clear:
most of what is printed in this country about the human foreskin
and circumcision -- even at the highest levels -- is nonsense and
lies.

...Since it's impossible to know in advance how any given baby
would eventually feel about having had his foreskin cut off, the
only rational, ethical, humane choice is to do no harm, simply by
letting him keep his foreskin intact.

...Considering all that is now known about infant circumcision
-- especially the disastrous effects it can have on a child's
life -- I should think its continued sanction by the American
Medical Association would be an extreme humiliation to the entire
medical profession.

...Most circumcised males probably don't know how strongly
most uncircumcised males feel about circumcision because
uncircumcised males, out of consideration for the feelings of
circumcised males, tend to reveal their real feelings about
circumcision only to each other.

...Foreskin? Ask a man who has one.

...Any way you look at it, there's something deranged about
cutting off part of a baby's penis.

...The enormity of the wrong done a baby by depriving him of
his foreskin becomes clear if you talk with enough men whose
foreskins are intact to realize how much the baby probably
would have valued his foreskin -- and why -- had he been
allowed to keep it.

...When you circumcise a baby, you are cutting off a part of
his penis that you can cut off only because the person
you're cutting it off of can't protect himself because he
is a baby.

...Not all Jewish male babies are circumcised. The
protective, sensory, and sexual functions of the foreskin;
the absence of any proven medical benefits of circumcision;
the pain and trauma of the circumcision operation; the risks
inherent with anesthesia; the occasional, inevitable
circumcision disasters -- even deaths; reports by males
circumcised as adults of losses of as much as 90 percent of
penis sensitivity; evidence linking circumcision to
psychological harm and sexual dysfunction; the fact that the
vast majority of males who are given the choice prefer to
keep their foreskins intact; the resentment many males,
including many Jewish males, have expressed about having had
a healthy, sensitive, normal part of their penis cut off
without their consent; the growing perception of
circumcision without consent of the circumcised as a
violation of human rights, even when performed as part of
a religious ritual; questions about the motives of those
who, apparently insensitive or indifferent to these
considerations, persist in circumcising babies anyway; and
the almost ghoulish atmosphere of secrecy and deceit that
pervades the entire circumcision issue -- are some of the
reasons a growing number of both Jewish and non-Jewish
parents in this country are deciding against circumcision
and are keeping their newborn sons whole, uncircumcised, and
intact.

...If doctors in the U.S. are cutting healthy, normally
functioning foreskins off of babies for $300, what healthy,
normally functioning body structures are they cutting off of
adults for $3,000?

...How many men content with having been circumcised as babies
justify the circumcision of that one baby who will eventually
wish he had not been circumcised?

...How can anyone justify cutting off a part of a baby's penis
that almost all males who are given the choice prefer to keep?

...Aside from anything else, isn't cutting off part of someone
else's penis without his knowledge or consent rather presumptuous?

...What could more clearly indicate how circumcision can harm a
baby than a man with part of his penis cut off who thinks -- or
pretends to think -- he hasn't been harmed?

...How many women have been led to think that something was
wrong with them, when the real cause of their problem was the
absence of a foreskin from the penis of their circumcised
partner?

...Why are so many so anxious to destroy this exquisitely
sensitive part of a child's body? What compels anyone to cut off
a baby's foreskin? Greed? Envy? Sadism? "Revenge"? What?

...What kind of person trains himself and maneuvers himself
into a position where he can get away with cutting off the
foreskins of children and babies?

...What is the relationship between the compulsion to
circumcise and the state of having been circumcised? What are the
extreme manifestations of foreskin envy?

...Isn't the circumcision of babies often nothing more than the
desperate attempt of circumcised men to hide -- and to hide
from -- their greatest secret fear?

...What is it that keeps people from speaking out against this
"thing" that causes so much torment, bitterness, and grief?

...If a baby about to be circumcised could understand what was
about to be done to him and could speak, what would he say?

...How is it possible that so many doctors who have circumcised
so many babies have been so wrong about so much for so long?

...Who has made the mistake: nature or man?

...The very idea of giving a baby an anesthetic so he won't
feel you cutting part of his penis off is itself hideously
misguided -- like giving everyone at Auschwitz Valium so
they won't become overly excited when you herd them into
gas chambers.